Facebook will 'massively' simplify Messenger in 2018

Like a lot of people, I use Facebook Messenger on an almost daily basis to communicate with friends and family members. Although it's not my preferred form of communication, it's just what a lot of folks happen to use. However, I've been doing so with the Messenger Lite app on my phone since it was widely released last October.

If you've used the regular Messenger app at any point over the last couple years, you're well aware of the fact that it's a bit of a nightmare. Between in-chat games, bots for Spotify and Uber, a Snapchat-like stories feature, and way more than we have time to get into, it's quickly become bloated and filled to the brim with feature after feature that gets in the way of basic conversations.

Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven't. While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year.

Facebook doesn't hint at what features will be staying and which ones have met their maker, but even so, I'm 100% on board for this to happen.